


A Heartful of Soil

by turkeymagic



Series: Choices We Make [1]
Category: Fire Emblem Echoes: Mou Hitori no Eiyuu Ou | Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, Fire Emblem Series
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Post-Game(s), Self-Discovery, a few nobles working the fields is not enough to end a famine, alm’s dynasty will last for 1000 years but goddamn he’ll have to work for it, ignoring part 6 exists because it makes no sense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-26 22:55:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12568056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/turkeymagic/pseuds/turkeymagic
Summary: Reuniting Valentia is not the same as connecting its people’s feelings. The aftermath of Duma’s fall seems as good a time as any for Lukas to explore his own heart.





	1. Chapter 1

The week after the war is the worst week of Lukas’s life. Somehow, they’ve won but the world seems off-kilter. The sky in Rigel is as blue as it was in the south, and the sun rises every morning even when Lukas thinks something must have changed. He wakes without fail before dawn, sweating in his sheets and grasping for a weapon.

It isn’t dreams - he is lucky, in that regard. Several of the soldiers are still plagued by nightmares of the mad god, of Mila’s remains caked in dirt and dust, of the weight of innards under a sharpened lance. Just one day after they emerged from Duma’s temple, too weary to celebrate, Lukas stumbles over a blank-faced Clair.

He had personally managed four hours of restless sleep before deciding he needs to _run_. He has no destination in mind, just an abundance of nerves and adrenaline that have no place in peacetime. Still, it has not been long enough that Lukas feels safe leaving the protective walls of Castle Rigel, at least not without notifying someone and certainly not without armor. While Rudolf’s men have turned in their weapons, there are still unruly nobles and militiamen with grudges and egos to prove - people who would test the mettle of the fledgling king and his authority.

Lukas refuses to trouble any of the others with this - Clive or Forsyth would insist on accompanying him and Python is undoubtedly asleep - so he makes his way up to the battlements instead. The open air sets Lukas on edge (he will forever be most comfortable with branches overhead and something solid to his back), but he can see any incoming threats for miles and miles around the castle.

Clair stands on the very edge of one of the battlements, staring out into the distance. She doesn’t look back at Lukas, but he can tell by the way her fingers, tapping against the stone walls, still that she senses his approach. She’s put on a dress, unwillingly setting aside her armor in a meager attempt to placate the Rigelian nobility. The new king will not start his regime with steel at his side, but platitudes and smiles.

“Can’t sleep?” Lukas offers.

“I want to fly,” Clair says, “but my pegasus needs to rest… She’s been fighting so long.”

“Yes. At least she’ll get lots of rest now,” he says, taking a position beside her. They stand, almost elbow-to-elbow, both avoiding each other’s gazes. Lukas looks down at her hands. As delicate as Clair is, her hands have always been calloused and unladylike. There is still blood under her nails and dirt streaked in her hair.

“Both of us will,” she agrees. “This place… it reminds me of home. The carpets and portraits.”

“The beds,” Lukas puts in, and Clair laughs.

“Yes, I missed pillows and fresh sheets. This war was like a dream...and now I’ve woken up and it’s time to go back home.”

Lukas nods thoughtfully. He doubts he’ll get to go home now; more like his brother will put him to work elsewhere since he’s survived. Maybe he’ll keep Lukas at King Alm’s side, to better his standing among the nobility. Lukas hopes that will be the case.

“You won’t become a knight?” It is difficult to imagine Clair anywhere but Clive’s side, lance in hand.

She gives a small, sad smile. “Of course I will. Of course I will,” she says again, more to herself than Lukas.

They look at each other. A smear of mud runs from the corner of her lip over towards her ear, and her eyes are bloodshot. “Have you slept since…?” he asks.

There is no need to clarify. Clair turns her face away from him again. “It frightens me, Lukas. Sleeping. That I might wake and discover this is all a dream, that I’m still in the woods and there’s still a battle to be fought. Or worse, that none of this was real and there are no battles to be fought at all.”

Lukas doesn’t quite understand her meaning, but he wishes that he could. Clair looks more exhausted than he’s ever seen her, and he’s seen her cut down swathes of gargoyles over no sleep before. Clamping his hand on her shoulder (it is terribly small), he smiles at her. Placid and soothing, it is the only smile in his repertoire that Clive thinks looks natural. The others tighten around his eyes or look strained or forced, or else set Python into a fit of laughter.

“You should rest too. Clive will worry,” Lukas says.

Clair pauses, like that isn’t at all what she’d wanted to hear, but she shakes him off and steps away. “Yes, you are correct.” Then she fixes him with a haughty stare, regaining a semblance of her normal demeanor. “Of course, someone would do well to take his own advice.”

Lukas might have argued, but the tension he’d woken with has long dissipated and he has never been one to argue in the first place. “We can head back down together,” he suggests. “To ensure neither of us can get distracted before making it to bed.”

“You will take that back at once!” Clair says. “I would never go back on my word.”

“Haha! Yes, how ill-mannered of me.” Lukas smiles again, the same smile.

Clair has sworn from the start the Deliverance would not fail, that the four of them would see Zofia restored. Now that her oath has reached its resolution, what else is left?

They are both knights, through and through. But knights aren’t what Valentia needs anymore.

...

As it turns out, what is left is farming.

The liberation and reunification celebrations are greatly dampened by the withering of the year’s crops. The only consolation is that, in the aftermath of the war, there are many fewer stomachs to fill, and that is little consolation at all. Alm had pledged to help with the farming himself, and yet when the time comes, it seems there is always one more courtier demanding an audience, one more treaty to address, one more property dispute to settle… In the end, Alm’s efforts are better applied elsewhere. In ruining his country, King Rudolf had left his son an even greater burden.

Lukas himself had made a similar pledge, but as it turns out, raising crops is a lot more complicated than gutting a man. After nearly uprooting a row of potato sprouts, Lukas has his hoe confiscated. They set him to work watering the planted seeds, reasoning he would have a hard time messing that up.

Shortly afterward, he is banned from working the fields at all and banished to tending livestock.

Forsyth and Python both take to fieldwork like fish in water, and even the latter looks befuddled by Lukas’s ineptitude. “It’s not that hard. They’re not your enemies or anything,” he says. Lukas doesn’t understand, but Python only shrugs. “Don’t worry about it. Everyone’s got weaknesses. I’m almost jealous.”

Picking up his partner’s slack, Forsyth tries to explain the difference between farming and fighting with a series of complex, but vigorous arm motions. “They respond well to patience!” He throws his arms up in an almost violent fashion. “But you’re treating them like they’re objects, not living things.” Forsyth pulls his hands back to his chest, his fingers twitching sporadically. It reminds Lukas of a witch’s spasms as she dies. “However you approach them, they’ll absorb your energy and grow from it.”

Lukas looks to Python for clarification, wondering if he should be offended. He usually prides himself a patient and gentle person, but perhaps the plants think Forsyth more pleasant company. “Uh, don’t worry about it. Good luck with the sheep.”

Clive laughs when he hears, his arm tucked around Mathilda’s waist. Both of them have done well, now that the fighting is over and they no longer have reason to part. “It’s reassuring to see you struggle with something,” he says. “You’re always so put together… It makes a man wonder if you’re some kind of superhuman.”

It is not at all reassuring to Lukas, who is unused to struggling with anything.

The shepherd foists a small flock of sheep onto Lukas, though Lukas suspects he had just found these particular sheep difficult to deal with. They enjoy snapping at any fingers within range of their teeth and finding their way into fields they do not belong in. Lukas isn’t sure sheep follow any sort of alpha-hierarchy but these sheep certainly don’t respect authority.

Fortunately, Lukas proves better at wrangling them than he had tending crops, and he has only just put the sheep to pasture when he sights Tobin watching him. He and Gray had both been knighted within a week of Alm’s coronation, an offer the king had extended to everyone who had helped fight Duma, though many had turned him down.

“Sir Tobin,” Lukas says, wiping his forehead. He has never been one to sweat much, another point of envy between him and his fellow knights.

“You don’t have to force yourself,” Tobin says. “If you asked, they’d switch you back to the military division, easy.”

Lukas brushes a blade of grass off of his pants. Without the weight of his armor, he feels like a different person. Many of his fellow soldiers haven’t hung up their spears; there are plenty of opportunistic bandits terrorizing the countryside amidst Valentia’s upheaval, and troops are in and out of the castle to dispatch them every day.

“You’d probably be more useful there anyway,” Tobin adds.

“Perhaps,” Lukas says. “But there are still nobles who think themselves above working alongside common folk. If seeing me in the fields alongside ordinary people helps smooth things over, this is where I belong.”

A wayward sheep tries to steal one of Tobin’s fingers, and the new knight doesn’t even blink before swatting the sheep on the nose. The sheep makes a harrumphing noise of disgust and ambles away.

“Suit yourself,” Tobin says. “Alm asked me and Gray to help out himself, but, uh. I dunno. We went from killing a god to shoveling manure, you know?”

“It is an incredibly important duty.” Lukas wonders if he should volunteer to help with the manure. He has no shortage of endurance or strength, and he surely couldn’t kill any potatoes doing that.

“You’re not bored at all?”

Lukas doesn’t know if he’s ever been bored in his life. “There’s too much that must be done to be bored,” he says.

Tobin frowns. Again, Lukas has said the wrong thing. “Hey… You’re close to Clair, right?” Lukas looks over his shoulder, expecting to see Clair’s pegasus in the sky. It is the only explanation for the sudden topic change, but the skies are clear.

“I consider her a friend, yes,” he says.

“Is she… Is she doing all right?” Tobin asks falteringly - strange, Lukas thinks, for a man with the audacity to smack a sheep in the face.

Clair had wanted to help with the farming as well, but her quirks are not exactly appreciated among the commoners. In the end, Clive had relegated her to diplomatic duties.

“Why not ask her yourself?” Lukas asks. “She often goes on walks with your friend Gray.”

Tobin winces, and Lukas understands. He’s born witness to unrequited feelings - ironically he’d heard a little of Clair’s own feelings for Alm in the earlier days before they’d freed Zofia. “Forget it,” Tobin mutters. “It was dumb anyway.”

Lukas himself has never experienced this pain. He has had admirers, but there has always been something more pressing to attend to. There still is: the restoration of Valentia. But Clive and Mathilda have both made time for romance amidst their considerable contributions to the kingdom, so Lukas figures romantic attachment must not be a hindrance.

“Not if it’s important to you,” Lukas says. He can feel that small smile on his lips. Tobin looks at him, not convinced in the least. “Objectively, it’s better to try. Even if it looks hopeless, it’s better than never knowing.”

Tobin wavers visibly. His lips thin, and his eyes wander to the east, over the pastures, over the fields and the village and the walls to Rigel Castle. Or Valentia Castle, as the king has renamed it.

“You might try just talking to her. It doesn’t need to be flowers or anything,” Lukas suggests.

“Maybe,” Tobin allows. His face twists like he regrets bringing Clair up, like he can’t believe he’s talking about it. “It’s just. Competition, you know? Not knowing might be better than - knowing. That I wasn’t good enough. Do you have anyone like that?”

Lukas thinks of his brother. “Not really.”

“Well. I’ll consider it,” Tobin says. He turns to walk away and jabs his thumb over his shoulder at Lukas’s flock of sheep. “Don’t let them bully you.”

…

The tentative peace between the Rigelian and Zofian factions lasts only a few weeks.

(In that time, Lukas has birthed two sheep and culled twenty more. There is much more weight to the slaughter of an animal than of an enemy on the battlefield. He once sliced a wing off a gargoyle and knocked it to the ground with the brunt of his lance, then stepped on its throat without even looking down to watch the life bleed from its eyes. There are gargoyles and then there is the prickly sheep with the small eyes, loin fat under Lukas’s hands. He remembers Python tried to mount this sheep and it chased him twice around the pasture before Lukas managed to coax it away. He also remembers the last war orphan he saw, a waif of a girl leading her two year old sister by the hand.

He will probably never see them again. Lukas slits the sheep’s throat.)

Word has spread that King Alm intends to remain in Rigel Castle. No matter how often the king insists its new name is Valentia Castle, the Zofians insist he come home.

They still feel Alm belongs to them, as their liberator, and the fall of one dynasty is not enough to dissolve a nation. Anything less than a triumphant march home is treachery, and while they dare not accuse the king of anything, the Rigelians are a far more acceptable target.

On his worse days, Lukas can even see where they are coming from. The sun and moon both shine in the north too, but there are also mountains and mornings so cold the dew frosts over the leaves of the crops. The Deliverance’s quest may have led them to the gates of Rigel Castle, but it will never be home for Lukas. As much as his home is with his friends, they are not who he has been fighting for.

Lukas does not tell this to the king, who paces the halls before dawn breaks, when he has no meetings to attend, carefully laying his hands against stone walls and tapestries in places he imagines his father or cousin might have once touched.

Clive and Mathilda both place enormous trust in Alm’s decisions, and Lukas suspects there is freedom in walking through the gardens without the reminder that Fernand had once gotten his lance stuck in this tree or fallen in this pond.

Python would say that nobles are the same around the world, and it probably hasn’t even struck Forsyth to return home.

“You’re homesick!” Clair determines. But the Zofian nobles have more demands: bandits plague the Southwest and they need military support from the king; famine has struck the Mideast; a Rigelian warlord encroaches on Zofian territory; and how exactly do Rigelian noble ranks hold up against Zofian ones?

The squabbles over the military are the most ferocious; despite the Deliverance’s meteoric rise, the bulk of Zofian soldiers still lack the discipline and training of their northern counterparts. The brigands run more rampant, the nobles fear more for their own assets, and the people are unused to hunger. They require more assistance than the Rigelians believe they deserve - why shouldn’t they suffer for just a degree of the suffering the Rigelians have endured for so long? More than once, Alm throws his hands up and storms out of the meeting in favor of a good romp on the training grounds.

For every good thing Lukas remembers about Zofia, there are two more things he does not miss at all. Clair shrugs. “If it is not homesickness, perhaps it is merely a bout of nostalgia. Or perhaps you do not like Zofia, but you do not like Rigel more?” She laughs as if she has told a joke. “My apologies. I just can’t imagine you disliking anyone. You are most certainly a gentleman!”

It is true that Lukas cannot think of one person he dislikes. Once, he might have named Emperor Rudolf or the mad god Duma, but no longer. He considers truly malicious men like Desaix or Slayde, but even they are difficult to hate after he has seen them crumpled in the dirt, blank eyes staring brokenly at the heavens. Lukas sees no vindication hating someone like that.

He finds solace in an unexpected person: the princess’s own brother, Sir Conrad. Though Lukas had not recognized the strange masked knight during the battle with Duma, he does remember the night the prince was murdered. The entire country had been thrown in an uproar, the last of the the king’s progeny assassinated and Zofia’s greatest general disgraced.

That had been a dark time for knights. A dark time for princes too, Lukas supposes.

Like Lukas, Sir Conrad has hung up his lance to help stymie the famine. Rather than put the princess’s brother to menial labor, Conrad joins the ranks of noble bureaucrats, crunching numbers and keeping lists. He checks the records of all the resources in the castle and surrounding villages, deciding how and where and for whom to dispense them.

Instead of keeping him cooped up behind a desk, the king keeps Conrad busy in front of the people, assigning rations. He is a Zofian prince raised in Rigel with the disposition to show patience to both.

Lukas is rather patient himself, but there is patience and then there is Conrad, who can look a Zofian soldier that once served under Desaix straight in the eye and give him just as much flour as the widowed amputee before him. Clair might not have agreed it is kindness, but Lukas thinks it is.

“How do you do it?” Lukas asks one day, when he comes to report how many pounds of wool he’s sheared, how many pounds of mutton he’s harvested.

Conrad pauses in his notation. “Do what?”

“How do you smile at them? At the same people who would have raised a weapon at you only a year ago?”

He does not specify a country. There are no shortage of crimes both Rigelians and Zofians have to answer for.

“How do you?” Conrad returns, resuming his report. His handwriting is neat, concisely condensed with narrow letters and few flourishes.

“I don’t know how to be angry,” Lukas says. He knows insults for sure, the impact of his lance against that count’s thigh, the twist to knock his legs out from under him, and the emptiness as Lukas stood over an ally’s downed form. The initial indignation had faded fast, and Lukas had paid for it. He doesn’t know a fury righteous and pure enough to drive someone forward. “But I think I would if I could.”

Clair’s anger flickers into existence sudden as a flame, and Clive lashes out like a sword, hilt covered in barbs. Forsyth erupts into words that spill from his mouth like his body physically cannot contain all his emotions, and Python simmers, as likely to retaliate as he is to sulk alone in a secluded corner.

His own anger… Lukas imagines himself in Conrad’s shoes - imagines his manor has been set ablaze with his brother inside - but perhaps he and his brother have already burned that bridge because all he feels is the distant annoyance that he may have to return to Zofia to carry on his brother’s affairs.

“My smile doesn’t mean I’m not angry,” Conrad says. “I have seen hell everywhere on this earth, and I’ve chosen to look at the good. My anger won’t help my sister. This will help my sister.” He places his hand, a warrior’s hand stained with ink, not blood, on the finished report.

...

He is passing one of the supply rooms when Lukas hears a loud clatter inside, followed by a low series of curses.

It really isn’t his business, but the actual expletives sound familiarly creative so Lukas pokes his head inside to see Python standing over what used to be a stack of ceremonial Rigelian platters and is now an incriminating mess on the floor.

“Oh, it’s just you, Lukas,” Python says, voice flat. “I thought it was the idiot.”

“Is it a good or bad thing I’m not Forsyth?” Lukas asks. As much as the duo ribs each other, they did not come this far together without developing an intimate level of trust. Their relationship is incomprehensible to outsiders and also none of Lukas’s business.

Python huffs. He is not often in a sour mood, and Lukas doubts that he really cares this much about the fate of Rigelian pottery.

“Depends,” Python says. “Are you gonna tattle to Mommy?”

Lukas looks at the shards of ceramic at Python’s feet and says nothing. When he looks back up, Python grimaces and runs a hand through his bangs

“Sorry. It’s got nothin’ to do with you,” he says. “I’m just. Stressed.”

If Lukas says he accidentally knocked the platters over, he doubts anyone will question him. He’s also pretty sure he wouldn’t get in trouble either. As quick as Forsyth is to lecture, he has never raised his voice at Lukas.

“I’ve never seen you like this,” Lukas says.

“Oh, yeah, I’m great at suppressing all my anxieties,” Python agrees. If this was Forsyth, Lukas might pry, but Python has not spoken so straightforwardly in years, and Lukas thinks even one misstep might shatter the fragile weakness Python is showing.

“What were you doing in here?” he asks instead.

Python gestures all around him, erratic movements of his hands that almost overturn a bottle of aged wine (Lukas should check whether Conrad knows there is more wine in here; the healers are often in short supply). “What are any of us doing here? All this talk about saving the world, about liberation, and we’re still dancing at the beck and call of nobles.”

“Not quite the glory you envisioned?”

“Glory can lick my entire ass,” he replies. “I don’t care for it. I didn’t fight a war so I’d be allowed the honor of sitting next to rich people at supper.”

In a way, Lukas understands. He himself is not Clair or Clive, who navigate high society like a second home. That is a station not reserved for Lukas. But just like the pasture, there is a duty in bowing to the wealthy, in recognizing how those coffers could rebuild Valentia. A moment’s dignity is such a small price to pay for wood.

“No. No, we didn’t,” he agrees, and the downturn of Python’s lips suggests Lukas should feel more than just passing corroboration.

If Clive has glory, and Lukas has duty, someone like Python with neither must only have his dignity. Perhaps true loyalty is a privilege of the rich as well. The new king would certainly let Python go if he wished. And for an honest, terrible moment, Lukas wonders if they might even be better off.

Python is a pair of able hands, more familiar with a plow than all Clive’s knights put together, but for all his expertise, he’s a poor face for nation. It is a thought Lukas knows not to voice aloud; if this sullen mood is any indication, there is no need for words.

Python was never meant for a palace.

“Will you leave?” Lukas asks.

“I’d rather die than stay here another month,” Python says. It sounds like an answer, but it’s really not. There are worse fates than dying, and Lukas doesn’t know if Python has ever left Forsyth before in their entire lives.

...

One month after the mad god’s defeat, a letter arrives from Zofia bearing just the crest of Lukas’s brother with no name. Clive fixes Lukas with an intense stare as he hands it over, so heavy Lukas _suspects_ -

It seems impossible, even with the blood of thousands on his hands. Some small part of Lukas must have thought that with all his brother’s machinations, he would find some way to evade death, and Lukas is almost embarrassed to realize it.

He’s not embarrassed though. The familiar penmanship of his family’s steward seems to have sapped the last of his stilted emotions from his body, and now he is just a puppet playing a part. Lukas’s brother might have sent him to war as a death sentence, but it was still a freer life than anything else Lukas would have had. It had still led Lukas to where he stands now.

“I have to go back,” he says before he realizes it. He looks at Clive and then up to Alm, whose ill-fitted crown sits too low on his forehead. “Home. I have to go back to sort his affairs.”

Lukas is the only one left to become head of household.

Clive lays a kind hand on Lukas’s shoulder. “It’s dangerous still,” he says. “Take Clair with you. A familiar face will make things easier.”

There’s still so much to do here, so much, but Lukas has to pack and make arrangements for his flock and prepare a steed for travel - no, he’ll go on foot. It will take longer, but he would not deprive the palace of more resources. For so long, Lukas has fancied himself some inhumane stoic, and here he is dancing at the beck and call of a past he cares nothing for.

He doesn’t know if it’s worse to want his brother back or not.

...

Lukas had never interacted with Faye much, even throughout the entirety of their campaign. Somehow, she had managed to make herself scarce wherever he went. Lukas might have thought it was some personal grievance, had the rest of the Deliverance not reported the same thing. The only people Faye seemed to tolerate were the other children from her village and the gentle cleric they’d encountered soon after.

After Alm’s coronation, Faye had returned home immediately. She’d been the only one to leave so early.

The Valentian knights have yet to scour the south for bandits and Terrors, and in the interest of safety, Alm has arranged for an escort to meet Lukas at what had once been the Rigelian-Zofian border. Still, he is not expecting a familiar face to be waiting for him by the sluice gate.

Faye straightens when she sees them. She looks different. Her hair is tightly woven against her head instead of braided into pigtails, and she’s wearing a new dress. Her eyes skip past Lukas and Clair, searching for someone who isn’t there, and when she finally returns to meet Lukas’s gaze, her smile is dimmer.

Clair makes a small noise at Lukas’s side, and maybe that’s what’s really different: not Faye herself but their perception. For the first time, she’s alone, and she’s the only one of them who has ended up that way.

Everyone has struggled to let go of the things they lost during the war, but Faye still holds on. Lukas doesn’t know if that is weakness or strength. No matter how many battle accolades he earns, he has not learned anything about the affairs of the heart.

Instead of commenting, Lukas says, “Thanks for agreeing to come all this way.”

He has enough tact not to mention Alm, but the unspoken intention lingers in the air. Clair rescues him with an airy compliment about the trim of Faye’s dress.

“Very fashionable,” she says.

“Thank you,” Faye says. “My grandmother had an old dress like this so I thought I’d try my hand at doing it myself.”

“You made this yourself?” Clair exclaims, hands flying to cover her mouth. “It’s so pretty!”

“Our village doesn’t have seamstresses like the capital. We all make our own clothes,” Faye says. As precisely as she’s pinned down Clair’s astonishment, she speaks with no derision. “I sewed Celica a dress once. I can sew you one, if you want.”

Clair actually jumps with delight. “I would be honored!”

Lukas can’t help but stare at her. He hasn’t heard such genuine glee in her voice for so long, he’d forgotten how much of her court demeanor is an act. As easily as she’s adapted to the Valentian court, she doesn’t belong among the Rigelian court ladies with their engagement rings around uncalloused fingers. And she doesn’t really fit with Lukas either.

He wonders if Clive sent her away on purpose.

The girls chatter as they make their way southeast to the small patch of land Lukas’s family oversees, sandwiched between mountain and desert. Clair occasionally remembers to direct a comment or two Lukas’s way, but Faye doesn’t say anything to him. Here, he is more an outsider than he is one month deep into enemy territory; he is back in Zofia yet still a stranger.

Oddly, Lukas doesn’t mind it. Clive once called him a cold observer, but there’s nothing cold about Clair’s hand on Faye’s shoulder as she digs a scrap of wood out of her heel. His spear is strapped to his back, and he isn't even wearing full plate mail. It’s like he's finally allowed to exist without a reason.

He is headed home, and there is no one there to meet him.


	2. Chapter 2

There is a painting of Lukas’s brother hanging over the mantle in the study. He stares down at Clair, unsmiling, with his arm posed unnaturally on a table in front of him in a poor mimicry of relaxation. Clair tilts her head as she examines the artist’s brush strokes.

“With how you talk about him, I thought he wouldn’t look like you,” she says.

“We still share the same father,” Lukas says. As little as it wound up mattering in the end.

“I must say…what kind of upbringing you must have had, to grow up together but turn out so different,” Clair muses, tapping her finger against her chin. “Did you look up to him when you were younger?”

Lukas looks at the portrait. The shape of his brother’s eyes is a little different than Lukas remembers, but he doesn’t know if that is the fault of his memory or the brush. They hadn’t even played together as children. “No,” he decides. “I learned to fight and he was the heir. It didn’t even occur to me.”

Clair scrunches up her brow. “But I don’t see why those things would prevent you from anything…”

Lukas smiles at her and, as gently as he can, says, “I was expendable.”

Stricken, Clair snaps her eyes back towards the portrait and then deliberately looks at the floor. “Oh. That’s...horrible.”

“I suppose,” Lukas says. “But if things had been different, maybe I wouldn’t have ended up here. Maybe I’d have died in the war.”

“Yeah.” Clair smiles again, soft and faint. “I’m glad, Lukas. It was all for the best.”

Lukas believes that with all his heart. He doesn’t want to think about the person he might have become had he been the heir instead. Still, a dark part of Lukas wonders if he and his brother really are so different. In the end, they both did as they were supposed to do. And maybe that’s the way they’ll both die.

…

Over the course of two weeks, Lukas learns more about taxes, macroeconomics, and civil disputes than he has ever desired to learn. He has no time for Clair, who only takes one glance at the mantle portrait Lukas hasn’t found the energy to remove yet before flouncing off to find Faye. With embarrassing frequency, Lukas finds himself on the balcony overlooking the nearby farms. He is too far to make out the faces of the sheep grazing in the pastures, but he almost thinks he can hear their voices.

At the end of his second week, he comes home from a particularly tedious parley with a neighboring count to find Python slumped over his kitchen table fingering the lip of an ale bottle. It definitely came from Lukas’s own stores.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” Lukas says. He takes a step forward, like the image of Python before him might vanish.

“Sharp of you,” says Python. “You aren’t getting a prize.”

Lukas checks what’s left in the bottle and finds over half its contents gone. Python leaving the castle is one thing, but Lukas hadn’t expected him to run straight to another noble’s abode. It may not be that much of a shock. The only other place he might have gone would be his village, and it takes a certain kind of courage to return home without the person you left with.

Sighing, Lukas sits down across from Python. “Stay as long as you want. Though I suppose you didn’t need me to tell you that.”

However Python got in, Lukas doubts it was through the front door.

Python puts the bottle back against his lips, but instead of drinking from it, he just laughs. “You look terrible.”

“It turns out I did not show my brother enough gratitude for keeping me away from all this,” Lukas says. He doesn’t entirely mean it. He’ll sort out this estate with the same levelheaded dedication he’d given to the war and recovery efforts. “I’m surprised the king let you come alone.”

“You shouldn’t be,” says Python. “He can hardly do anything about something he doesn’t know.”

For all his bravado, Lukas knows Python. Python hadn’t deserted when it was the three of them against a stronghold of pirates. He’d stuck with the Deliverance under the command of a man he scorned and then under an unknown child with only a noble’s backing. He’s held his ground against magic and gods.

And that loyalty has led Python to a world he hates more than anything else. This small act of rebellion, well...it is only taking back a small portion of the control he’s already handed to someone else.

“Forsyth?” Lukas asks.

“Didn’t tell him.”

Without another word, Lukas retrieves a second bottle of ale and sets it beside Python. Python doesn’t volunteer anything else either, so for awhile they just sit in silence until Clair and Faye get back from whatever noblewomen and village girls get up to together. If no one else, at least Clair is enjoying herself. The rise and fall of their voices is dimly audible for a full thirty seconds before Clair shoves the kitchen door open, leading Faye by the hand.

“ - and then Clive says to me, ‘I’m afraid the only way you’ll get her in here is on a plate!’” she exclaims just as her eyes fall on Python’s slouched back. “Oh.”

Faye, engrossed in whatever story Clair had been telling, takes another second to realize they have company. She spares Python only a second’s glance before looking at Lukas. It almost seems like it’s the first time since she’s arrived that Faye has acknowledged he exists.

Any explanation Lukas could offer seems like an infringement on Python’s privacy, so Lukas only says, “Welcome back. Are you two hungry?”

Clair, ever the expert on things left unsaid, addresses Python directly. “What a pleasant surprise, Python! If I had known you were coming to visit, I would have stayed to greet you. Well, no matter, we simply _must_ catch up. No offense to Lukas, but this province is nothing like the capital.”

“You aren’t wrong, princess,” Python says. One and a half bottles ago, he might have added a self-deprecating comment about certain other things ill-befitted for the capital, but he’s reached a point in inebriation where his crueler faculties have been sated.

“Lukas! Faye and I are going back to the lychee grove tomorrow to help with the air laying,” Clair says.

“Air layering,” Faye corrects.

“Python should come with us!” Clair clasps her hands together as she beams down on them both. She doesn’t wait for a response, barrelling on. “Of course, Lukas is always welcome to join us too.”

If Lukas recalls correctly, the lychee farmer is having difficulty with the lack of organic matter in her soil. Someone had explained to him that the grove would need attentive fertilizing, but Lukas has difficulty imagining Clair knee-deep in manure. “Unfortunately, I have trade agreements to look over, and I need to restructure the militia,” he says.

“It’s just one day,” Clair wheedles. “It will do you no good to lock yourself up in here without engaging with the common folk. Look at Alm!”

Against his will, Lukas glances at Faye, but her face is devoid of the pain or sorrow he had expected. Her expression barely betrays that she’s heard Clair at all. Lukas thinks of those sheep, so familiar and yet too far away to know. It would be a shame to forget the realm below his balcony, especially as two commoners stand in the kitchen of his manor looking for all the world like they belong there.

He thinks of Clive, opening the door to let them in.

“Very well,” he says. “One day.”

...

He regrets it when the lychee farmer hands him a burlap sack of light brown powder and instructs him to sprinkle the “bone manure” around the roots of the trees. Lukas accepts the bag like he would grab the pointy end of a knife and tries desperately to convince himself he is doing this for the greater good.

Bone manure, he learns, is finely ground up livestock waste material used to add nutrients back into the depleted soil. Clair plasters a polite smile on her face and does not whoop when the farmer tells her and Python to carefully remove portions of bark from nearby marked branches.

Faye, the most experienced of them, gets to examine the rest of the trees for signs of nutrient deficiency. Lukas can’t decide whether this is better than sitting behind his desk all day, negotiating trade deals and signing off on rations legislature. Maybe they aren’t different at all, just two sides of the same goal: getting food on everyone’s tables.

Clair is doing her best to keep Python’s mind off his troubles, and Lukas can hear the lilt of her chatter even half a field away. To his credit, Python interjects every now and then, but whatever he says doesn’t seem to deter Clair any.

The work is strangely consuming. Lukas sprinkles the bone manure over the roots, and it should become monotonous but there’s a heavy weight to each tree he treats. He almost trips over Faye, silently kneeling in the dirt before a young tree.

“Er, sorry,” he says, holding up the burlap sack. “I need to fertilize this one.”

Faye shakes her head. “Just a minute,” she says as she hops to her feet and darts off. Lukas shifts awkwardly. Something about this tree must have caught Faye’s eye. It isn’t the healthiest tree Lukas has ever seen, but fertilizer should help that. A minute later, Faye returns with a hand shovel and a knife.

She sets to work without further explanation, crouching down and beginning to dig. When she’s unearthed a significant portion of a tree root, she scrapes away the bark.

“Is something wrong?” Lukas asks, shuffling forward to peer at her handiwork.

“Yeah…” Faye sounds unhappy. “Root rot.”

She leans back to give Lukas a better view. Underneath the bark, a system of dark stringy growths cover the exposed root, some sticking out like worms and others embedded into the flesh like veins.

“This is bad,” Lukas guesses.

“It’s contagious,” Faye says. “And it takes a long time for symptoms to show up like this, so there’s a high chance for contamination. We might have to dig up the whole section.”

Lukas stares at the rot. How incredible it is that something so small and innocuous could deprive a nation of hundreds of pounds of food. He thinks of his two weeks behind a desk, and of the nobles in their ballrooms, and the artisans in their workshops and how all their livelihoods could be affected by something they would never know existed.

“I’ll get help,” he says.

The farmer is not happy and sets about checking the other trees. Lukas has watched civilians bleed out, has seen a lucky arrow knock Clive out of his saddle, has looked death straight in the eye and come out on the other side stronger for it. None of that has induced such a peculiar sense of helplessness as watching a stocky woman in an old straw hat shake her head at five trees in a row.

But they hadn’t chosen this path expecting it to be easy. There is only moving forward, starting over, and doing better.

...

By coincidence, Lukas sits next to Faye when they break for midday. Her dress is splotched with soil, and he can’t help but wonder why she’d worn it to do farmwork. The stains don’t seem to even register with Faye, though, as she drains her canteen in one go.

The water in Lukas’s canteen tastes a little like dirt. During the war, he’d had worse, and it is a guilty revelation that he’s gotten used to his water tasting clean.

For lunch, the farmer’s husband brings out fresh potato bread and creamed corn, which Lukas insists he pay for. Clair and Python take a few extra minutes to finish up so Lukas and Faye have only each other for company. Predictably, Faye bites into her bread instead of striking up a conversation. Her eyes are fixed overhead, somewhere above the distant yellow ball of Clair’s head.

“You were really helpful, spotting that rot today,” Lukas says. “It might have done a lot of damage if left alone.”

The words themselves are only a courtesy, since Faye herself had been the one to tell him about it. Really, he’s curious what the difference between himself and Clair is, what Faye had recognized in her. It could just be that they are two girls who have suffered similar experiences. It could be that Lukas is deficient in some way.

Faye shrugs. “Maybe,” she says.

It’s hard to ignore the dismissal in that response.

“Apologies,” Lukas says. “If you’d prefer to eat alone, I can take my leave.”

That, at least, wins him Faye’s attention, and her consideration feels more momentous than even Lukas’s father’s. Finally, she says, “I don’t care. I don’t dislike you, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I see,” Lukas lies. For lack of anything else to do with his hands, he takes some bread and tears a bite-sized piece off. “I thought we might have gotten off on the wrong foot. I’m glad I was mistaken.”

Faye looks down at the bread Lukas has rolled into a ball of dough in his fingers. “Don’t play with your food,” she says.

Obediently, Lukas puts it into his mouth. “It’s a shame we haven’t gotten to speak before this,” he says after he’s swallowed.

“Is it?” Faye touches her shoulder, right where one of her braids would have fallen if she hadn’t been wearing her hair up. “We have nothing in common. There’s no reason for us to talk.”

“Nothing?” Lukas repeats. “We could have talked about Alm.”

Faye’s expression shutters in a way it hadn’t when Clair had mentioned him. “I don’t want to talk about him with you.”

Lukas backs off. There’s some boundary here, but he doesn’t know what it is. “I apologize. I did not mean to bring up bad memories,” he says, dipping his head slightly.

“I don’t have any bad memories of Alm,” Faye says.

She’s a puzzle.

“I apologize anyway,” Lukas says.

Faye locates the approaching figures of Clair and Python, the former gesticulating something wobbly and the latter pretending not to listen. Right before they enter earshot, she says, “You’re not the only man with opinions on me. Tobin and Gray tell me all the time I have no chance so I should give up and move on. I’ll die before that happens.”

She stands abruptly and grabs the basket of potato bread, jogging ahead to meet Clair and Python. Lukas gets out, “Wait, that’s not - ” but she’s already gone, and when they get back to the table, she and Clair have moved on to some other topic.

Python fixes Lukas with a raised eyebrow, leaning back in his seat so far he threatens to topple over. “Not the type I pegged you for,” he says in a low voice, leaning closer so only Lukas can hear him.

“I beg your pardon?” Lukas is sure Python isn’t suggesting what it sounds like he’s suggesting.

“Just thought that if you were gonna swing, it’d be someone like Clive,” Python says with a shrug.

Bewildered at the idea of swinging at all, not to mention that other people were thinking about Lukas in that way, Lukas shakes his head. “It’s not like that.”

“C’mon, Luke, ol’ boy, you can tell your buddy Python,” Python says, openly leering now. “Forsyth would have an aneurysm if he knew his colleague in straightlacing was leaving him behind.”

His volume only drops a little in mentioning Forsyth’s name. Whatever Clair is doing seems to be working, if at Lukas’s expense.

“I’m serious. I just thought…” Lukas hesitates. “She’s kind of like you.”

Python makes a drawn-out huffing sound, neither an affirmation nor a denial. “I ain’t pining away for anyone.”

“No, but you’ve both been led to a place you don't belong,” Lukas says. The words are almost cruel. They sound like permission. “You both are choosing to keep moving forward.”

Python laughs and it's a humorless thing. Every bite Lukas takes tastes so much fuller than any meal he has ever had before: the butter and cream working together to highlight the sweetness of the corn instead of masking it, the texture of the kernels, the subtle pepper. He tastes the earth of Zofia, the newly arid land, and the tentative future.

The lychees haven't grown in yet, but Lukas wants to try one. They've put a little bit of themselves into these trees.

…

Lukas catches Faye by the elbow as they are washing the tools they'd used to dig up the infected roots. “I didn't mean it that way,” he says. “I don't understand what you're going through, but I’m not going to tell you to stop.”

It’s a gamble, taking the most direct approach, but Faye pauses in running water over her shovel. Nothing on her face indicates that she does or does not believe him when she resumes her work. “All right.”

They’re not friends, not by a long shot. But maybe, Lukas thinks, they’ve reached some kind of understanding.

...

Lukas’s twenty-fifth birthday comes and goes as the days grow warmer. Clair returns north, but Python stays. After the day at the lychee grove, he regards Faye with a budding interest, and while the pair don’t exactly converse, occasionally Lukas will catch them lingering in the same room, and more than once Lukas spots a new patch on the elbow of Python’s sleeve.

Once Clair leaves, Faye doesn’t stick around all the time, disappearing every few days. Lukas suspects she’s visiting her village, and the thought strikes a pang of guilt in his chest that he’s inconveniencing her in some way. But Faye doesn’t go out of her way to do him any favors, and something keeps her coming back.

Python goes with her sometimes. Neither of them tell Lukas what they get up to, and Lukas doesn’t ask. Python walks a little straighter, and when he stares into the distance he looks thoughtful, not reminiscent.

Clair’s parting gift to Lukas had been a small potted plant she’d received as thanks for helping an elderly innkeeper. It sits in the corner of Lukas’s desk, usually on top of some commerce agreement or provision numbers. At first, it seems like some kind of wild grass, green and pluming, but in the last days of spring Lukas notices a small flower bud forming.

The morning it blooms into a brilliant orange daylily, a messenger arrives from Valentia Castle, formally inviting Lukas to the royal wedding. After the war, they had rushed Alm’s coronation, but the wedding arrangements stalled in their earliest stages. For one, no one knows which customs to obey for the wedding of a Rigelian prince raised in Zofia and the secret Zofian princess, which would take place on Rigelian soil.

“Who cares?” Alm had protested. “It’s all Valentia now.”

A lot of people cared, and they’d dragged out the preparations for far longer than either bride or groom desired.

Lukas hasn’t given himself the time of day to think about it, but he’s missed the north. Valentia Castle has never been what Lukas imagined for his future, but it is now the home of his friends and allies. Alm wanders through those castle corridors, paying fierce attention to every detail of the architecture like he might absorb his people’s culture that way. Clive is out in the courtyard, Mathilda leading the new recruits in training reps.

His flock of sheep will have grown in his absence as new lambs are born. Lukas doesn’t know if he would even recognize his favorites anymore, or if they’re even still alive.

The invitation requests Python’s and Faye’s attendance as well. They come and go as they please, but Lukas manages to track them both down before supper. Python scans the invitation quicker than a mission briefing and nods.

“Wouldn’t miss it,” he says, squaring his shoulders like a challenge.

Faye takes the invite and runs her fingers along the edges, keen eyes searching its contents for something deeper than sentences. The letter is signed both Alm and Celica, but it is Celica’s sloping handwriting that forms the words.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Lukas says. “He’ll understand.”

“I’ll go,” says Faye.

Lukas recognizes her expression, a poignant desperation that transcends comprehension. He feels that same pull in his soul. His duty is here, to his people and to his bloodline. But something calls him north.

By the time Lukas gets back to his study, the daylily has wilted. Lukas plucks its corpse from the stem and drops it out the window.

…

It is a small, solemn affair. The country is still in mourning. It is still recovering.

Lukas attends as a guest, not a guard, and watching the destined couple intertwine their fingers, he almost feels that the change comes naturally.

...

The king and queen implore the guests to stay another week, and despite knowing how much work must be piling up on his desk, Lukas is tempted to agree.

The day after the wedding, he runs into Faye and Python on his way out the gate, and the sight of them together is so familiar he barely registers it until he notices the packs slung over their shoulders. Faye looks unconcerned with Lukas’s presence but Python lowers his gaze.

“Leaving so soon?” Lukas asks.

“Yeah,” says Faye. “I’m going back home.”

At the wedding, Celica had worn a pure white gown that had belonged to Rudolf’s wife. Her veil had been hand-stitched by a master tailor, who had spent months painstakingly embroidering strings of gold into the lining. She’d floated down the aisle, more a visage of grace than a human. And the smile Alm had greeted her with when he’d taken her hand to help her up the steps had shuttered out the entire world.

Lukas couldn’t help but notice that Faye sat with Mycen instead of the other Ram Village kids. Python sat on her left rather than with Forsyth.

“Tell me if I’m overstepping my bounds, but...you had to know what would happen coming here,” Lukas says. “You knew, and you still wanted to come. I just can’t understand that.”

“What did you come here for?” Faye returns.

“Alm’s a friend,” says Lukas. “Of course I’d come to his wedding.”

“The wedding’s over,” she says. “You have your lands to attend to.”

A low blow, but Lukas knows it isn’t from a place of malice. Faye can’t hurt him. He wants to understand. “I’ve been gone for months,” he says. “A week to pay my respects, and then I’ll go back.”

Faye looks to Python, and some silent affirmation passes between them. “I’m not surprised,” Faye says at last. “You didn’t choose to come up here. And you didn’t choose to go south either.”

“You did,” Lukas guesses.

“I love him,” she says. “I always will. But no matter how much it hurts, knowing him has been the greatest happiness. I will never turn my back on that.”

Python shifts his weight, turning slightly to the side to hide his expression, and the movement draws Lukas’s attention. “And you?”

“What do you want a guy to say?” Python rubs the back of his neck. “He belongs here. I don’t. I...recognize that.”

“Are you going to Ram?” Lukas asks.

“For now. I don’t know what I’ll do afterward, but hey. If you get tired of all this,” Python says, gesturing at the palace, “hit me up sometime.”

“You should write Forsyth a letter,” says Lukas. “He deserves that much.”

“I’ve never been one for writing,” Python says, but it’s not the same as a refusal. Lukas lets it slide.

The sky is as blue above Valentia Castle as it is in the south, and somehow Lukas thinks it might have grown bluer than the last time he was here. The grass has grown taller, and the people have started to amble where before they kept their heads down until they reached their doorsways.

“I hope you find what you’re searching for," he says, wondering what Faye sees when she looks at the castle.

Python throws up a sloppy salute even as he turns his back to Lukas and walks away, Faye on his heels.

Their words linger.

...

One week bleeds into two. The sad truth is that Lukas’s steward can run his lands well enough without Lukas’s actual presence, and there are still a few things keeping him in Castle Valentia.

The northeast is rioting. There’s nowhere on Valentia where food is plentiful, but the lands around the castle at least see their new king at work, see nobles and soldiers in the fields with farmers. Before, Rigel had been united by mutual struggle; now, it splinters.

Alm cannot go to appease them himself, but he sends Clive east - the highest respect he can give their demands - and Clive takes half his knights. Mathilda’s face goes dark when their horses disappear from view but she holds her tongue. Even lamenting these circumstances takes up energy they need to fill the cavernous gap in their workforce now.

Lukas thinks Clair will be more worried for her brother, but something else is on her mind. He’s caught her on the battlements more than once, looking to the southern horizon, and weirder still, she’s taken to wearing knee-length dresses. For a while, Lukas suspects Faye might have delivered more than she promised, but he notices a similar style in the corsets and skirts of other Rigelian noblewomen. Clair resembles Celica more than she does Faye.

She is happy to see Lukas after the wedding, but they don’t talk for long. Her absence is even more conspicuous compared to the long nights she’d stayed up with him in his study. Lukas puts it out of his mind. Here, she is with friends. They really are nothing alike.

His flock has been given to a villager more qualified to look after sheep, and instead, Lukas is put to work as an outlook. His spear feels unfamiliar in his hand, but no one is expecting trouble. It’s an unofficial role anyway, given to Lukas as a “trusted advisor” to disguise how thin the king’s army has spread itself. Every soldier has increased duties, and while Alm has relegated a sizeable percentage of the royal stores to keeping the army fed, the men suffer from lack of sleep and motivation.

The emphasis on growing food has created a shortage of quality metalwork. The scouts and patrols don’t wear armor, and slipshod swords shatter during training. Soldiers route bandit strongholds on foot, their horses requisitioned for pulling plows.

There is no end in sight. No amount of enthusiasm or prayers will make the crops grow faster than they deign to.

Forsyth throws himself into his patrols with unprecedented abandon, declaring he has to do enough work for two now. Lukas missed how Forsyth reacted the first time Python had left, but the wedding has taken its toll on him, especially off the field. He falters opening doors now, holding them for a second too long waiting for no one, and when he talks to himself, he leaves the air a beat to respond before he grimaces.

He eats enough for two, and when Mathilda gently reminds him to slow down, goes without for a day.

Every bite tastes more bitter than the last. Every bite is one fewer bite for someone else.

...

Clive sends word that witches have been spotted in the northeast the same week Clair announces she is engaged. She won’t have the wedding until everything settles down, but she is glowing.

It is difficult for Lukas to celebrate for her in the midst of all this turmoil and work. He fears she will sense it in his demeanor, so when he isn’t on duty, he escapes the castle.

On the roof of the abandoned church on the far edge of town, far above the skyscape formed by the village huts and shops, Lukas can just make out the familiar shadow of a man, unmoving. He walks slowly, keeping his eyes on the path ahead, so that Tobin knows he’s arrived long before Lukas looks up and calls out.

“May I join you?”

Since the fall of the Duma Faithful, the church’s upkeep has deteriorated as clergy and villagers alike turned their attentions elsewhere, but the vines clinging to the side of the church walls must have been accumulating for much longer. When Tobin nods a curt affirmative, Lukas grabs ahold of them to pull himself up.

The faded brown overalls Tobin left Ram Village in have long been donated to some needy youth, and now he wears a dark Rigelian long coat that accentuates his physique. He is no longer a gangly teen lusting for war riches but a young adult. All of them are.

Lukas sits next to him, his fingers and heels finding purchase in the roof shingles. He doesn’t need an explanation. “Do you know now?” he asks instead.

Silence stretches between them until Tobin lets out a bark of laughter. The latter half of it drags out like a sigh. “I never told her,” he says. “I never tried.”

It’s a situation that warrants a bottle of ale from Lukas’s stores, but alas. Lukas just looks at Tobin. He doesn’t have the right to comfort him.

Tobin continues, “I think I still would have lost. But I’ll never know.”

“Did...Gray know? How much you liked her?” Lukas asks.

When Clair had told everyone, they’d been holding hands. Gray leaned in and cracked a joke about how long he’d waited for a yes and how long he’d have to wait for the actual wedding too, and Clair had pulled away with a scoff. But she’d clutched her hand to her chest, cradling a slim ring as gold as her hair.

“Maybe,” Tobin says, doubt clouding his voice. “I don’t think I knew. It was just an idea. A dream. But I guess it was something else for Gray.”

“If it’s too hard for you now,” Lukas says carefully, “no one will blame you for stepping away.”

Tobin smirks, mirthless. “And going where?”

“Anywhere.” Lukas doesn’t let the reflexive derision sway him, maintaining eye contact. “Even though you care about them, it can be better for everyone to give yourself that space. They’ll understand.”

“No,” says Tobin, and there’s a new resolve in his tone that gives Lukas pause. “I’m going to stay.”

He doesn’t look very happy to admit it, but his jaw is set. Lukas nods. “You’re sure?”

“There’s too much work to do for me to run away now.” Tobin looks up with a weak smile. “I don’t want to see them together, but I’ll never forgive myself if I let that distract me from helping people.”

It’s the same situation, Lukas thinks, and yet there are different answers. He can’t honestly say that one is better than the other. He doesn’t have that right either.

The things that bind Lukas to the people are things he has no control over, but Lukas doesn’t know if he’s really chosen - not like Tobin has. But then, no one had offered to let Lukas leave either.

Nobody but Faye.

He thinks this is what she must have been talking about, that day at the gate. If Lukas won’t allow himself to think about leaving, he hasn’t allowed himself to choose to stay.

“Ready to go back?” he says.

Tobin looks up at Valentia Castle, an entirely different world from the village he grew up in.

“Yeah.”

...

He asks for permission, when he goes.

Clive still isn’t back yet, even though he’s sent word that the riots themselves have stopped. Conrad has arranged for some shipments of weapons and armor from overseas, but until they arrive, the army is making do. The queen has fallen ill, and while she’s still in good spirits, Alm grows increasingly distracted throughout all of his meetings.

Some noble has accused another of conspiring to commit tax fraud. Rumors of adultery are involved.

It is a good time to leave and a poor time to be left behind.

They let him go anyway, and as Lukas excuses himself, Alm calls his name. “Take someone with you.”

“I beg your pardon?” Lukas says. “It’s enough that I’m leaving. You need your men here.”

His father’s crown fits so poorly on Alm’s head that when Alm takes it off, Lukas is surprised how kingly he looks. Despite his small stature, he fills in the throne well, like he’s always been prepared for this role. “You’re my friend, Lukas,” Alm says. “If you hadn’t come to my village, I wouldn’t be here today. Take a guard. Please.”

It’s fitting, that it ends the same way it begins. Lukas heads to Ram Village.

...

Forsyth becomes a new person when they cross the border. He’s been alert since they left the castle, but the change of pace does him well, especially as they travel through familiar territories. Lukas hardly lifts a finger whenever they set up camp, what with Forsyth prepared to physically toss him aside if he gets in the way of securing the tents or starting the fire.

They are half a day past the old Deliverance hideout when they spot smoke pillars over the treetops. They aren’t close enough to hear anything, but the sight is old and familiar. Lukas exchanges a look with Forsyth in time to catch him mouthing, “Bandits.”

It’s just the two of them, and Lukas knows Forsyth far surpasses him in skill now. There aren’t many people left in the south with the discipline and training to match a soldier’s spear, but desperation has driven the brigands to ruthlessness.

Lukas knows Forsyth would rather carve out his own heart than turn his back on innocents, but his duty here is to Lukas. If Lukas continues south, Forsyth will follow.

It just comes down to what Lukas is here for.

He unstraps his lance from his back, jerking his head towards the smoke to give Forsyth the go ahead. In return, he receives a brilliant smile he hasn’t seen since Forsyth had been knighted.

In no time at all, they come across the devastated village. Axes have torn through doors and windows, scattering debris and splinters of scaffolding across the ground. Someone has spilled a bag of grain the same way, and a child kneels in the dirt to recuperate as many seeds as she can. Other survivors have extinguished the fires, and others still have begun to drag the dead and injured out of the streets.

“We’re not too late for pursuit, but they’re moving fast,” Forsyth says.

“Let’s go,” says Lukas.

They track the bandits east, and by the time night falls, Lukas has relocated his footing in the woods. The bandits are not so much sloppy as they are overconfident. The king doesn’t have enough knights in these parts; he doesn’t have enough knights anywhere.

Lukas and Forsyth sneak up on their camp in tandem, silently maneuvering around the underbrush, but it’s Forsyth who takes the first kill, darting out and skewering a man as he rises to use the bathroom. They’re close enough that another bandit notices the movement, but by then Lukas is in position to attack.

The bandits are unprepared to defend themselves, but they’re numerous. Lukas has only downed three before the others have their weapons in hand and it’s time to regroup. Forsyth handles his spear expertly, dispatching two in one fell swing as he surges forward to join Lukas.

Lukas quashes the unease in his gut. This is his first battle since Duma, and he can’t afford to regret not training now.

Just as Lukas drops under the swing of an axe, an arrow sprouts out of the bandit’s forehead. It startles him so much he almost drops his weapon, but Forsyth unleashes a battle cry behind him.

One enemy at a time. Just look ahead.

They’re words Clive told him once, and Lukas falls back on them.

The arrows appear again and again, downing enemies in Lukas’s peripheral before they get close enough to threaten him. Forsyth mows through the rest with a vigor that pulls Lukas back to the days before Alm, before Mathilda had been captured and Clive had stepped down. It was the three of them -

There are two enemies standing before Python drops out of a tree, an arrow freshly strung and pointed at one of them.

Forsyth levels his spear at the other.

The final bandits curse them all, their families, and the kingdom of Valentia, but those gurgles are eclipsed as Python and Forsyth step back and, for the first time in months, face each other.

“Are you sure you two haven’t grown a little rusty, needing ol’ Python’s help like that?” Python says, voice hoarse.

Forsyth closes the distance between them in two strides, seizes Python by the neck of his shirt, and slams him against a tree. “Damn you!” he yells, shoulders heaving. “You could have said something! We could’ve worked something out! You could have said goodbye!”

Python’s hand flies to the back of Forsyth’s wrist, but he lets Forsyth lift him even as he winces at the impact. “...sorry about that,” he says, too late.

“How was I supposed to know you weren’t happy?” Forsyth continues. “We’ve always been together…”

He lets go of Python’s shirt, arm falling limply back to his side.

“You’re right,” Python says. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“What are you even doing here, Python?” Lukas asks.

“Heh. Well, it’s a long story, but after I’d had enough of feeling sorry for myself, I figured I couldn’t let my good friend Forsyth show me up just because I was down here.” Python slips past Forsyth to gesture around them at the bodies decorating the area. “Been getting up to a little cleaning, you know? Followed these guys for a while, but there’s not much a single guy can do when they’re awake.”

Python looks back to Forsyth and for a moment, his smirk veers dangerously close to a smile.

“Was thinking of recruiting some strapping young fighters, see if I can’t arrange a way to defend these villages,” he says.

The anger has evaporated from Forsyth’s posture. “I would have followed you,” he says helplessly.

“Yeah,” Python agrees. “But you’re happier up there. And that’s okay. I’m sorry I didn’t say anything to you. At the time, I didn’t get it yet, but...if it isn’t too late to say so, I’m proud to have known you.”

Forsyth lets out a single, tragic noise before he pulls Python into a tight embrace and begins sobbing into Python’s shoulder.

“Oof! All right, all right. We’re a little too old for the waterworks, aren’t we?” Python complains. He catches Lukas’s eye. “Heading south?”

Lukas allows him to feign a little dignity and answers honestly. “Indeed.”

“I hope you find what you’re searching for,” Python says.

Lukas smiles to himself. “I think I already have.”

...

Faye’s family keeps a single goat that lives in a small pen outside her house. It bleats at Lukas when he approaches the front door and trots up to the fence, shoving its head through the spaces between the wood posts. Lukas can’t help but smile; it’s friendlier than his sheep for sure.

Watching out for teeth, he extends a hand to pet the goat. It examines his palm but, finding no food, snorts and leans down to search the ground.

“Lukas?” he hears from behind him, and when he turns around, Faye is there, eyes wide. Her hair is loose, flowing past her waist and strewn with ribbons. It suits her: the ribbons, the dress, the goat, and the muted cottages lining the dirt pathway.

“Hi,” he says.

“You’re here,” Faye says, like saying so might make him disappear.

“May I come in?” Lukas asks gently.

Faye nods but it takes another second for her to begin walking towards the door again. With an unsteady hand, she pushes it open.

“Grandmother! I’m having company!” she calls into the house.

“It’s not that Alm boy, is it?” comes the response. Lukas politely schools his amused expression.

“No, his name’s Lukas,” Faye responds before looking back over her shoulder. “I didn’t think you’d come.”

Lukas peers through the doorway and then steps inside. Though quaint, there’s something homely about the interior of the cottage. The fireplace has been emptied in the summer heat, and in front of it, an old couch proudly bares the patches and worn lumps it has accumulated over several generations. Next to it, a pile of opened letters threatens to overflow off a wooden table onto the floor. Lukas recognizes Faye’s handwriting on the parchment.

Little patterned fabric squares and picture frames line the walls. Every corner of the house glows with touches of Faye.

“You thought I’d run away for the rest of my life?” Lukas asks.

Faye closes the door behind them and spins to face him. Her skirt flares around her knees. “If I hadn’t said anything to you, would you have?”

It’s a fair question, and one Lukas doesn’t have an answer to. “I suspect I might have, so I suppose a thank you is in order.”

“I didn’t do it for your gratitude,” Faye informs him. “I didn’t do it for you at all.”

Lukas smiles. “Perhaps you saw something of yourself in me?”

She falls silent for a moment. Then, “What did you come here for, Lukas?”

As true as he can, he says, “I really did want to thank you. And to tell you that I’m going to cede my lands. I’m going to keep training, and fighting for Alm, and I’m going to do it because I want to.”

Faye stills, watching Lukas as he speaks, and when he’s finished, they stand there looking at each other, for the first time on level ground. “I see,” she says.

It’s all she needs to say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> did i take offense at one (1) line spoken by one (1) character? yes. did i channel all those feelings into a 13k fic about farming? .........yes
> 
> there is an optional Lukas/Faye ending, which I know immediately sounds bad, but if I've managed to sway your opinion on Faye at all, maybe it will surprise you
> 
> i am housemenidy on tumblr


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